An exhibit featuring people important to artist Joan Bonetti is on display at the Rancho Bernardo Library through June 30.
“Personal Connections” has 16 paintings — mostly oil, but some watercolor — created by Bonetti, who lived in Rancho Peñasquitos for 21 years, then moved to Murrieta in 2021.
“I love to paint and involve people in my past or who are part of my life,” Bonetti said. “(‘Soaking Up the Good Stuff’) is from a photo taken in 1980 or 1981 when I was living in a house with three people.”
The students, who were living in Devore, in San Bernardino County, went on a trip to the beach in Los Angeles.
“The person who took the photo has been my husband of 43 years (Jeno Bonetti) and the other two people got married. They are my best friends now living in Santa Barbara,” Bonetti said, adding she is the third person in the painting, the one on the right side.
While her paintings are not necessarily exact replicas of the photos that inspire her, they are close because “it is difficult for me to veer too far from the images I am looking at,” she said.
“I tend to change the background or color, but as for the lines and subject I have a hard time getting away from that.”
Bonetti said she tends to be very critical of her work, something she has been working to embrace instead.
Another of her works on display is “The Artist as a Young Woman,” a self-portrait based on a photo a friend took of Bonetti in college.
“When it is a self-portrait I paint what I see and can’t be critical of it,” she said.
Bonetti said she chose to make a painting of that photograph — and it is one of her favorites — “because it makes me look bold, fearless and I really like that lighting. I liked how she photographed me and like the stare I am giving the viewer.”
Another painting is of decades-long friends titled “A Mighty Family.” Bonetti said one of the boys in the photo posted it on his Facebook page and she asked him if she could create a painting from it.
“They are not related to me, but have been part of my life since college,” she said. “It is of a husband, wife and three boys. The middle boy is my good friend.”
Bonetti referred to the family as “mighty” because they are “a wonderful example of a strong family … all have been successful,” she said, adding that the mother was a psychologist and recently turned 100. The boys grew up to have successful careers.
She said she typically sells her artwork, but there is a lot in this show that she wouldn’t sell.
“Most of it is personal and I wouldn’t sell them,” she said. “I would give them as gifts to family and the related people.”
Becoming an artist is part of Bonetti’s heritage, she said. Her paternal grandfather was an artist and she learned through ancestry research that several distant cousins in Denmark where her family originated have also been artists.
“I come from a long line of artists … it runs deep,” she said, noting her paternal grandfather, siblings and children have also been artists.
Her paternal grandparents immigrated from Denmark to the United States in 1959. A year later, Bonetti (then age 4) and her family also moved to the U.S. Her grandfather would do a lot of studies — making his versions of paintings he saw in libraries or museums, she said.
“Growing up we always had his paintings in our home. … He did one of Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Sower’ and when I saw it in a book I thought my grandfather was famous. But it was his interpretation of it. He did it as a hobby.”
As a student at the University of California, Riverside, Bonetti said she initially did not realize she could major in art. So she studied subjects such as psychology and business.
“One day it dawned on me that I was killing myself when I could be focusing on art,” she said. Bonetti earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art and was primarily trained by two professors, one who was very abstract and the other very traditional.
“I was trained with a little blend of both,” she said of her first formal art training.
Since then she has taken workshops, such as those offered by the North County Society of Fine Arts (NCSFA), which she ed about a dozen years ago. Her RB Library exhibit was coordinated through the group.
She said exhibit coordinator Cheryl Boeller suggested that Bonetti call her exhibit “Personal Connections.”
“Connections is the perfect word for it because the paintings are all connections to my life,” Bonetti said. “There are a couple of self portraits and two include my (paternal) grandmother, who was my muse. She was very colorful.”
Bonetti has not only been a portrait artist. For many years while living in Rancho Peñasquitos she owned a decorative painting company and was hired to paint murals and specialty finishes on people’s walls. She also did kitchen and bathroom cabinet refinishing.
“I was really busy and decided to cut back my work in the early 2010s,” she said. Now she occasionally accepts a commission to paint for someone.
“It is very different, murals versus canvas,” Bonetti said. “I have to do a lot more prep on the wall for murals and research the subject, do studies and get approvals from clients. … I did murals on kids’ rooms and in restaurants.
“But I like doing my own artwork and have a studio where I can just go in and start painting,” she said.
Bonetti said her favorite medium is oil because “it’s so luxurious, I can push it around on the canvas and not worry if it will dry quickly. I can rework it if I want to and I like how it is very vivid when it dries.”
However, she has recently gotten more into watercolor, a medium she learned about in an NCSFA workshop.
“I love to see how watercolor (turns out) and plan to experiment with it a lot in the future,” Bonetti said. “It is kind of mysterious and has a life of its own. … You can layer it when applying on a real wet surface and when it dries it looks amazing.”
“Personal Connections” can be viewed for free whenever the library is open. It is in the hallway on the Rancho Bernardo Library’s second floor, 17110 Bernardo Center Drive.
